Originally posted at just-cassie.com on February 11th, 2011
Disclaimer: I’ve known Anna for awhile now through the wonders of the internet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t give an honest review of her work 😉 I am pretty sure that even if I didn’t know her, I’d have wanted to read this collection of short stories. Zombies. ’nuff said.
My fourth read for the ABC Indie Reading Challenge was Anna’s recent release ‘Hungry For You’ which combines zombies and romance in various interesting, and original ways. From her site:
Love is horrible. It’s ruthless, messy, mind-altering, and raw. It takes no prisoners. It chews you up and spits you out and leaves you for dead. Love is, you could say, very much like a zombie.
In this haunting short story collection, anything is possible—a dying musician turns to tea for inspiration; a police sergeant struggles with a very unusual victim; a young wife is trapped in a house hiding unimaginable evil….
With Hungry For You, A.M. Harte explores the disturbing and delightful in an anthology that unearths the thin boundary between love and death.
There is a lot to like in this collection. It’s a nice length, each story can be devoured quickly, and then mulled over, she re-imagines zombies in many different ways, some of which I can’t say I’ve ever seen before. Which is saying something. Zombies have been done to death (‘scuse the pun), rehashed in so many ways, but often using the same old bits and bobs. You know – meteors, folks rising from the dead, brain eating, that kind of thing. I love that it explores some new angles, and blends two things you might not think to bring together as the focus point for a collection: love and zombies.
I actually wish I had this in paperback – and that’s the first time I’ve had that thought since my Kindle arrived. I think perhaps collections such as this are more fun in paper book form though, because you can easily flick through, jump from story to story, read it in any way you want to. I am still a newbie Kindle user, but it seems easiest just to read from start to finish on the thing, and not so easy to flick through a text.
This is a book I would like to flick through. I’d have an easier time picking my favourites if I could. There are a couple in there that really tickled my fancy, and when I figure out which ones they are (I’ll be reading it again, I have no doubt!), I’ll make sure I come back and post them. I think for now it’s enough to say that there are some really fantastic stories in there, and the ones that aren’t as fantastic are still good stories. A really entertaining read. I gave it 4/5 stars.
Next on my list is Heirs of Mars, by Joseph Robert Lewis. I’m about 1/4 of the way through and really enjoying it so far!
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